Community Action Planning Day 1

The question of the day is “What does it mean for something to be sustainable? How does this apply to your project?”

Today was the first day of our Community Action Project. Together, our delegation will be serving Bella Vista and Guachupita by presenting and processing a project to them that will benefit and aid their communities.

The main objective of today was to introduce and acknowledge the community action project we will be doing. To do so, we visited two communities, which are Bella Vista and Guachupita. We will be constructing the two centers within these cities. These centers are primarily for the youth, age ranging from 5-11 years old. Ludoteca is a play center and Sala De Lecto Escritura is constructed as a school which offers the learning of spanish, math, and art. In order to initiate this CAP, we must remember to use and process the 3D’s and 3H’s. The 3D’s are discovery, design, and delivery. The 3H’s are heart, head, and hand.

Quote

The quote of the day is “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”

Today, we woke up at 7:30 AM and ate breakfast at 8:30. We had a seminar discussing about human rights and introducing our Community Action Project. The seminar ended around 11. After it ended, we received the chance to call home for Father’s Day (Happy Father’s Day!) and buy necessities (junk food) from the supermarket! We had lunch at our usual place (Comedor D’Ines) at 1 PM. We ate lunch for about an hour and return to the hostel to prep for our english classes which will be tomorrow. Ivon, one of the fundraising coordinators that will be working on this project with us, came to our hostel to lead the way to the communities of Bella Vista and Guachupita. Although, the walk was 20 minutes long, it was worth it because we were all excitedly greeted and welcomed into the community. We toured the area and visited the two centers that we will initiate our project at, which are Ludoteca and Sala De Lecto Escritura. After that, we had our usual dinner and nightly meeting.

In today’s seminar, we discussed and watched a video about Human Rights. We were also handed the Universal Human Declaration Rights. To spread the knowledge of these topics, our group believed that it should be discussed and taught in schools. From this discussion, we are supposed to consider and incorporate this subject into our project. Hearing and learning about the needs of humans will give us a better understanding of what we should bring and process into this project. Reflecting from seminar, our student speakers, Desmond, Diana, Christina, and Siddarth talked about their personal stories of human rights and that opened a bigger image of how human rights are still not facilitated even in today’s world. From the video, I learned that there are twice as much slavery as there were in the 1800s. That made me really question how far we have actually come. From human rights, we transitioned into our CAP. From visiting the two communities, we discovered, which will be leading to a design and initiating its delivery later on. Having a better understanding of human rights, we will consider this topic when building our project.

Answer to QOD

For something to be sustainable, it must be long lasting. Hence, the word sustain, which is to “keep in existence; to maintain”. This applies to our project because we want to build something that will guaranteed to be sustained in the community. If we were to come back and visit the two centers in a few years from now, we expect it to still be there and used as something that will bring the people of the community together.